The general tendency of wealth and power are to enervate people, to make them proud and indolent, and, after a certain time, they leave a country. Individuals have no means to counteract this tendency, unless the governing power of the country gives a general impulse to them, in cases where they can act, and acts itself, with care and attention, where individuals can do nothing.
In the case of education and manners, in the case of providing for children, individuals may do much, but government must not only give the means, but the impulse. In the case of the soil becoming insufficient for the inhabitants, and of taxes and national debt increasing, government may stop the progress; and in the cases of individual bodies trenching on the general weal, as well as in the tendency of inventions, capital, &c. to emigrate to other countries, the government may counteract, and, perhaps, totally prevent them all.
In all cases, individuals will and must follow their lawful propensities, both in the means of employing capital and expending revenue; that is, they must be left free, in a general way, and only interrupted and regulated in particular cases; but, sometimes, the means must be furnished them of going right, and in other cases the inducements to do so augmented. We shall take the subjects in the same order that they followed in the Second Book.
Though the manners of people, arrived at maturity, can only be regulated by their education, when young, if that is properly attended to, it will be sufficient; for though it will not prevent the generation that has attained wealth, from enjoying it according to the prevailing taste, it will prevent contamination being communicated with increased force, as it now is, to the children. The evils then will go on in a simple proportion; they now go on with a compound one, and the evils arising from the [end of page #277] luxury of each generation are doubled on that which follows after. If that is prevented, it will be all that probably is necessary; at all events it is probably all that is possible.
In taxation, the government should study to do away what is obnoxious in its mode of collection, for that does more injury to the subject, in many cases, than an equal sum would do levied in another manner; and when payments are to be made, the mode should be rendered as easy as possible. Every unnecessary trouble should be avoided in collecting a tax. In the tax on receipts and bills, why should the sums to which they extend not be printed on them, so as to prevent error, which is sometimes attended with great loss, and always with inconvenience? If this had been done, how many law-suits, how many nefarious tricks, would have been prevented? But not to speak of those inconveniences only, how much useless trouble, uneasiness, and uncertainty, would have been saved in the common way of transacting business? In most cases, the subject is treated as if neither his time, nor his conveniency, nor his feelings, were worth attending to. This is equally impolitic and unjust: there is, perhaps, no country where people are more careful to keep within the pale of the law, than in England; but when they are within it, and have power, no people use it with a more insulting rigour; and for this there is no redress.
In many cases, this would be entirely prevented by proper attention in first laying on the tax. There should be a board of taxation, to receive, digest, and examine, the suggestions of others. In short, pains should be taken to bring to perfection the system. At present, it is left to chance; that is to say, it is left for those to do who have not time to do it, and, of consequence, the blunders committed are seen by all the world. {212}
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{212} An act of parliament for a new tax is seldom ever right till it has been evaded a number of times, and even then in perfectioning =sic= it, an increase of revenue is the only object attended to; the conveniency of the subject is scarcely ever thought of. Taxes are laid on, that experience proves to be unproductive and oppressive, and sometimes are, and oftener ought, to be repealed; thousands of persons are sometimes ruined for a mere experiment. As the public pays for it, they, at least, might be indulged with a little attention; nothing costs less than civility. If half the attention were paid to preventing unnecessary trouble to the subject, [end of page #278] in cases of taxation, that is paid to the preservation of partridges, we should have the thing very differently managed. There should also be a public office, to hear just complaints against those who give unnecessary trouble, as there is for hackney coachmen. Men in all situations require to be under some controul, where they have power. Most of those who drive others, go wrong sometimes, unless held in check by some authority.
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The encroachments of separate bodies on the public, it is entirely in the power of the state to prevent. It is owing to weakness or carelessness, or ignorance, that governments admit of such encroachments, and they are easily to be prevented, partly, as has been shewn, by positive regulation, and partly by counteracting them, whenever they appear to be proceeding in a direction any way doubtful. When they do so, the conclusion may be, that they are working for themselves; and, in that case, they ought to be very minutely examined into; and, as all public bodies, and men belonging to a class that has a particular interest generally derive their means of trenching on the public from government, it may very easily controul their action, or counteract the effect.